Method of enriching gas for illuminating purposes.



1 STATES rAT T onrroE,

HENRYL. noHnR'rYQoF Manson, wIsooNsm.;

, METHOD or ENRICHING ens r03 innumma'rmerunrosns;

To all wliom it may concern:

Be it known that I, HnNRy L. DOHERTY, a citizen of the United States, residing at Madison, in the county of Dane .and State of Wisconsin, have invented a certain new and .useful' Method of Enriching Gas for Illuminating Purposes, of which the following is a specification, reference .being had to the drawing accompanying and forming part of the same.

Myinvention relates to the enrichment of combustible gas of any kind, more particuposition of water the combustible gas collected and saved for subsequent use is comlarly the so-called water gas or producer as. a I

In t e manufacture of gas by the decomp'osed chiefly of hydrogen and carbon monoxid which, burning,in the air, give a blue or non-luminous flame. essaryto artificially supply this gas with (carbon in a form in which it becomes incandrocarbon oil.-

I descent in the hydrogen and ,carbon monoxid flame and so reduces the desired illumina" tion." The car on is supplied in the form of hydrocarbon gas or vapor, usually produced by the vaporization or gasification of a hy- The gas, flowin through the carbureter, takes up the hydro-carbon gas or vapor and isthen delivered to the superheater and finally to the washing, cooling and purifying apparatus, after which .it iss'tored for distribution through the ".mains. In the enrichment method just described, as heretoforepracticed,'a considerable part of the hydrocarbon oil is actually decomposed or broken down to hydrocarbon of low illuminating value, and the carbon thereof, which is intended to furnish the incandescen'ce in the flame,is deposited in the carbureter as lamp-black, or in the tarry residue composed of the less-volatile part of the oil. Thecarbon thus liberated from the vapor is Wasted, so far as enrichment .of the water as is concerned, and conse ,,.quently the de ciency must be made up by ,a'l'arger supply of the hydrocarbon oil. This adds ,a considerable item t o the cost of the product, and it has long been desired to'obviate thesanie. I have therefore been led to devise my presentinvention, by which the breaking up of the hydrocarbon in the enrichment process, and-the consequent liberation of carbon, are eliminated. or at least It is therefore nec-.

Specification of Letters Patent. Patented May 23, 1911. l I i Application filed June 29,1905. Seria1-No. 267,503.

reduced to practically negligible mini mum. I I

I have discovered that under normal conditions of temperature in the carbureter,

the decomposition of the hydrocarbon is caused in some Way byfthe unvaporized oil coming in contact with a solid body notably the lining, of'the apparatusor the checker work therein. I therefore prevent the oil from striking any solid body, and do this by dissipating the-oil in the form of a very fine spray or mist, the particles of which .have insufiicient velocity to carry them against thelining or checkerbrick before they are completely volatilized. In other words the oil is volatilized entirely in the stream of 'gas which 'is flowing through the carburetor and by the heat of the gasitself. I have found that by this method practically none of the volatile constituents of the oil are decomposed, so that they all remain in the gas,'su'ch residue as is 1c in the car- 'bureter being composed almost, if not entirely, of the constituents which do not volatilize at the temperature therein.

My invention therefore consists, broadly stated, in admitting the oil'inthe form of a fine mist and vaporizing the same in the gas itself without permitting the unvapor- 'ized particles to come in contact with a highly heated solid body.; H

In practicing my method any suitable apparatus for spraying the oil may be used,

but I prefer that described and claimed in 11th, 1905, Ser. 'No. 240,540. Such an apparatus in connection with a carbureter is shown in the accompanying drawings, in which o V Figure 1 is a verticalsection of the carbureter, showing the preferred arrangement my" co-pending application. filed January of the spray'device. Fig. 2 is-a longitudi- 1 nal section of the spray'apparatus and 3 to 7 inclusive, show variout: forms of nozzles for use therewith.

The 'carbureter may be "of any suitable kind,- that herein shown being merely one convenient form. The outer casing of the same is'indicated by 1. It is lined with refractory'material, usually in the form of bricks, as. indicated at 2, and contains a quantity of refractory material 3, so arranged as to have numerous interstices or passages through its mass, as shown. This 15 'of a well-known type of water gas appa 'is generally known as checker work, and the amount thereof used in the carbureter may vary considerably.

When the carbureter is to be used a hotblast is blown through by way of the inlet and outlet 6. The checker work and lining are thereby soon brought to the proper ten1- perature, whereupon the supply-of: air is cut off and the gas to, be enriched is delivered through the inlet, At the same time the oil is injected into the sp'aceabove the checker work by means of. the spray device 7. The gas, passing through the hot checker those skilled in the art,

work is itself highly heated,

The process just described is merely that ratus, and will be. 'readily understood by y In accordance with my invention the spray from the nozzle 7 is so fine andthe velocity of theliquid particles composing the spray is comparatively so low that they are vaporized by the heat of the gas before they can strike the hot checker work-orlining. The result is that the volatile hydrocarbons are not broken up, but are merely vaporized, and in the form of vapor they are mingled with the gas and pass out therewith through the outlet 6.

Any suitable apparatus may be used for producing the-oil sp'rayfbut as before stated, I prefer that shownin Fig. 2, which is described and claimed broadly in my copendingapplication before mentioned.

F isan apertured member secured over an opening in the cover of the carbureter and provided with a yoke, indicated by Y, spanning the opening. -The top surface of the'member F 'is dressed to provide a seat for the plate P, removably held thereon by a screw yworking in the yoke. From the plate P the nozzle Nextends through the opening, into. thegpterior of the carburetor.

Extending throu the nozzle N is a pipe 01, and at the end of the nozzle is a spray cap C, The cap has two or more small orifices, 0, 0, arranged at an angle to each other, so that the fine streamsof liquid issuing therefrom will impinge on each other and be thereby broken up into a fine mist or spray. At the upper-end the pipe n is incommunication with the oil-supplypipe n. It is desirable that the oil shouldbe under consid erable pressure, so that the streams from the orifices in the cap willstrike each other with great force. The kinetic energy of the streams, represented by velocity, is thereby dissipated inbreaking up the streams into a very fine mist orspray.v ,Consequently the particles composing the spray, which particles are of course liquid, have only slight velocity, so that they are not carried far from the nozzle before they are vaporized by the heat of the gas into which they are'discharged and hence do not come into contact with the walls of the chamber or the checker work.

finer will be. the spray. Where a considerable quantity of oil is needed to give the desired degree of enrichment, the orifices, and

consequently the impinging streams, may have-to be made so large that the spray will not be fine enough for the best results, In such case the number of the orifices may be increased insteadjof their size. Also, instead of focusing them all at a common point, they may be focused in pairs, or-threes, etc. Fig.

3 shows, in plan a cap with four orifices, all focused on the same point. Fig. 4 shows a cap'withfive pairs of orifices, each pair having its own focus, The angle at which the streams strike also has an important eflect on r the spray, both on its fineness: and the space occupied by it. For example, the more nearly spray, and it will be projectedfarther from the nozzle. On the other hand, if the angle of impingement be very obtuse, as in Fig. 5, the spray will be very fine and will bemore 'or less diffused around the. nozzle instead of being thrown a considerable distance therenumber'and angle of the orifices any desired efi'ect may be secured, as will be readily understood. Instead of a cap, with orifices drilled or otherwise formed therein, a spray-.

ing device having inwardly discharging tubes maybe used, as. for example like those shown in Figs. (Sand 7. It w1ll be under-'- stood, of course, that any type of spray d evice may be used, those'shown being merely In general, the finer the streams'and the greater their impact, the

i parallel are'the streams, the coarser will be the t from. By properly proportioning the size,

Z in the supporting'memb er F. An outlet Z is provided in'the' plate P, registering with m passage? in the member F .7 By means of the. pipe and'passages just described a cooling liquid may be circulated through the interior of the tubular member N, around the oil-pipen, thereby preventing the spray apparatus frombecoming hot enough to break up any of the hydrocarbons within the same. Otherwise the. deposit of carbon within the device would soon choke the fine discharge orifices. Also, by

- breaking up of the oil in the spray apparatus'the'volatile constituents ofthe oil are reventin p g all discharged into the gas which is to be en= riched.

. The method herein described has been used .130

by myself in the manufacture of water and oil gas and the saving efl'ected thereby has other whereby the bodies of the stream strike been found to be very considerable, thus each other and are broken up or nebulized demonstrating its practical utility. into a. fine spray, the liquid particles of -What'I claim is: which have low velocity and are so minute 5 The herein described method of enriching :is to be 7a orized, substantially'coincident 15 combustible gas, which consists in dischargwith their ormation.

ing minute'streams of liquid-hydrocarbon at HENRY L. DOHERTY. high velocity directly into a chamber con- Witnesses: taming heated gas, and directing the bodies CHAS. A. FRUEAUFF,

10 of said streams toward and against each H. C. ABELL. 

